Disruption Uber alles: What the app-hail company hath wrought in New York

Billions for the top and pennies for the drivers. (Spencer Platt/Getty)

After Uber bosses rang the New York Stock Exchange’s opening bell, it was a wild ride for the ride-share giant Friday, creating a few new billionaires and enriching venture capitalists even as the stock dropped sharply in its first day of trading.

But the changes wrought on the streets of New York just outside the trading floor have been much more pronounced.

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An ocean of 80,000 Uber cars soaks the city, picking up a half-million fares a day — more than twice as many as all 13,587 once-signature yellow taxis. That total doesn’t count Uber’s competitors, whose combined fares are about half of Uber’s.

The rise of the app car has been a boon to ill-served uptown and outer-borough residents, largely ending invidious discrimination based on race or destination. That’s good.

What’s bad: All those cars have helped choke traffic. Uber is to be praised for helping pass congestion pricing, but that’s like an arsonist donating to the fire department.

Yellow medallions have plummeted in value. We don’t care about the fortunes of criminal owners like Gene Freidman or Michael Cohen, but thousands of ordinary cabbies saddled with crippling debt and a raft of suicides are matters of public concern, as are those Uber drivers stuck with payments on vehicles they can’t afford.

While Uber entered New York legally, they didn’t want to share info with the Taxi & Limousine Commission. Or serve people with disabilities. Or help drivers. They just wanted ever more market share.

The TLC held firm. Full trip data is now collected. Hundreds of accessible vehicles have drastically reduced wait times. Drivers are now guaranteed at least $17.22 an hour plus expenses.

Though Uber calls its workers “driver partners,” they aren’t partners in the $76 billion valuation. But since the utilization rules started, $152 million has gone to drivers, and that’s worth celebrating.